If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

I started playing The Witcher recently, and find it to be quite an enjoyable and refreshing take on the RPG genre. It's certainly a very unique game with some superficial annoyances but those are easy to look past. The the only major criticism I have so far is the rather dull opening... the game didn't really grab me until the end of chapter 1, which took me around 6 hours to get to.

I started playing The Witcher recently, and find it to be quite an enjoyable and refreshing take on the RPG genre. It's certainly a very unique game with some superficial annoyances but those are easy to look past. The the only major criticism I have so far is the rather dull opening... the game didn't really grab me until the end of chapter 1, which took me around 6 hours to get to.

But it gets really good really fast after that.

Yea its not the fastest starter but to be fair thats common amongst RPGs, its hardly the worst offender and I think the perhaps somewhat overlong intro section does a decent job of explaining what Witchers do and are, theres quite a lot of lore you've got to absorb.

Yea its not the fastest starter but to be fair thats common amongst RPGs, its hardly the worst offender and I think the perhaps somewhat overlong intro section does a decent job of explaining what Witchers do and are, theres quite a lot of lore you've got to absorb.

I agree! It's the beginning of chapter 1 where things get confusing - it always seems to me like you've missed out part of the game.

but god damn did i love that game. It just got increasingly better the further in I got.

I started playing The Witcher recently, and find it to be quite an enjoyable and refreshing take on the RPG genre. It's certainly a very unique game with some superficial annoyances but those are easy to look past. The the only major criticism I have so far is the rather dull opening... the game didn't really grab me until the end of chapter 1, which took me around 6 hours to get to.

But it gets really good really fast after that.

This, this, this.
I almost stopped playing the game because I'm not really a fan of RPGs but something chapters 2, 3 and 4 really kept me glued to my seat.

One of my biggest regrets about the Witcher 2 is that this is never addressed.

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on Witcher canon, but in the two books I've read, she only appeared as basically a one night stand. For all I know she could feature more prominently in any of the other books that have not seen an English translation yet.

Minor Witcher 1 spolier:

On my first trip through the game, I gave Alvin to Shani, because I thought Triss was actually going to turn out to be a bad guy in some hidden twist somewhere down the line. I didn't trust her after overhearing her conversation with the woman in the mirror at the start of chapter 3 or 4. But then once I really got into the universe and read the books, Triss seemed like the more natural choice over Shani, so I now side with her on any other trips through the game.

"What were we talking about? Pegasuses, pegasii, that's horses with wings. This motherf*cker got a sword that talks to him. Motherf*cker live in places that don't exist, it comes with a map. My God."

I think I need to give Witcher 1 another try because I couldn't stick with it after 2 or 3 false starts. It got rave reviews and I tried to like it but was really turned off by the clickity click combat and the alchemy crafting.

I think I need to give Witcher 1 another try because I couldn't stick with it after 2 or 3 false starts. It got rave reviews and I tried to like it but was really turned off by the clickity click combat and the alchemy crafting.

Easy difficulty. Potions aren't needed on it, but I recommend you learn to use them regardless. As for the combat, it takes a short while to get into it and you will fluff it up numerous times, but it's not bad. Unique, anyway.

I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on Witcher canon, but in the two books I've read, she only appeared as basically a one night stand. For all I know she could feature more prominently in any of the other books that have not seen an English translation yet.

Minor Witcher 1 spolier:

On my first trip through the game, I gave Alvin to Shani, because I thought Triss was actually going to turn out to be a bad guy in some hidden twist somewhere down the line. I didn't trust her after overhearing her conversation with the woman in the mirror at the start of chapter 3 or 4. But then once I really got into the universe and read the books, Triss seemed like the more natural choice over Shani, so I now side with her on any other trips through the game.

After reading the books I started to dislike Triss. Yennefer is my waifu.

Sorry to bring up this ancient thread, I have a question that is very much related but not quite answered.

I've heard The Witcher praised everywhere, and thought I'd give the first episode a shot (2 shots, actually, a few months apart from each other). In my second attempt, I played for about 20 hours, I got halfway through Chapter 2 and I was just so... bored.

I found the combat fiddly and generally uninteresting: the movement was weird, and it didn't seem to matter too much, if the game thought you got hit, you could have been miles away and still get hit, so it was just: "Drink potion, use magic until endurance runs out, left click, right click again when endurance is restored. I played on hard, and when I fought the Golem in the swamps, I wished I had a script to left-click and right-click on time, because that's pretty much what I did after drinking the initial pots. Just one hand. Clicking. For a good 5 minutes.

The world is huge and dense, but I didn't find it very interesting. And the plot just moves so slowly. 20 hours, and I'm not even halfway through the game? Also, the plot just didn't catch me. It wasn't "bad", but I didn't find it remarkable either. And I was put off by what I can only call the "masculine" feel of it all. Not trying to start an argument about sexism, but I definitely felt it was made from a heavily "male" perspective, if that makes sense. (And the way girls just can't wait to reward Geralt with sex was a bit ridiculous and off-putting at times, too)

I gave up after I spent 1h30m running around Vizima, going from house to house talking to people because of quests and waiting/sleeping/looking around for people without a fixed location.

So, I guess two questions:
1) Does it get better / does it become different? Should I stick with it? Or is it more of the same stuff I didn't like?
2) Regardless of 1, what is the chance I may like The Witcher 2? How different is it?

For context, I love indie games and story-driven games, I don't like sandboxes and grinding. I love most Final Fantasies, I thought Mass Effect 2 was ok (even though I often find Bioware narratives and choices ultimately unsatisfying, despite occasionally good moments), I liked parts of Fallout 3 (but I wish it was more dense, and for every mission/part I enjoyed there were 2-3 I found dull) and parts of Dragon Age: Origins (But again, for every hour of content I found engaging there were 2-3 I found uninteresting) and I dislike Skyrim.

I really want to love a Western RPG the way I loved JRPGs, but JRPGs feel more personal and get me to care about characters and plot and their world in a way that Western RPGs just haven't, so far. (Planning to play some old-school RPGs, both old and new, like Planetscape, Torment:ToN, Wasteland 2, etc, but I would like to know about the Witcher, since it's so highly praised)

The second game has much better combat mechanics and nothing as grindy as the swamp. In most other respects it's broadly similar in atmosphere and approach. I guess the plot is faster paced than the first game, but it still feels slow.